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Greetings, citizens of Netherlands,

the latest surge of media activity has inspired me to voice my opinion as well. Of course, as a relative newcomer and Dutch newb, my opinion might not be as relevant to the Dutch society as the opinion on long-time members of this community. However, I can offer some comparisons from abroad, and talk about my personal ideas.

First of all - there has been discussion on the activity/inactivity and the main causes of it. All countries of our size have probably had this discussion in the past, or are having it even now. And it is correct both game and people in it are to be blamed. Well... blamed might be a strong word - it is not a crime to be "less active". But that is the aspect of life and time. After so many years, only a few people still have the patience and will to continue in doing their daily routines, or to invent new ideas (or re-invent old ones) to engage others. This is the tendency of modern era though. When something is not exciting, or it is boring, we have the tendency to "hop" onto something new and abandon the old. Whether it a hobby, a job, a girl/boyfriend... And you cannot really do it in this game, when the game becomes too boring (and there is no doubt it CAN become boring quite easily) - even if you "hop" onto another country (like I did now 😶 ), you will not be able to escape the general boredom and routine of "work-train-fight-click-click-click"... and the only option then becomes to abandon the game. As many already did in the past, and many might do in the future.

Ufff... this was a horrible paragraph... if it does not make sense, it is because my team is just playing a match, they are losing, and they did not manage to score from penalty (so my attention is divided between the match and this article, trying to do both 😃 )


With that said, there is one solution to increase activity, which I, from my previous expreience, despise and advise against - chaos and conflict. I come from Cuba - a country, where more than 50% of citizens regularly vote, where Congress can produce 80 messages in one day, and where people are actively engaging in political life. However, as you can imagine, it has a downside, which can quickly turn dangerous and make the community "toxic". If you do not know, what "toxic" community means... consider yourself quite lucky. "Toxicity" was the case of Cuba in 2016, when I came there. And after an intermission of 2017/early 2018, when the conflicts were silenced a bit, and people actually tried to work together, Cuba recently became "toxic" again. During last PP elections, ALL major parties tried to TO each other, and two of them actually succeeded. And sure - it makes people active a lot - but is it what you want? I hope not!

Of course, I am not saying that chaos and conflicts ALWAYS need to lead to "toxic" community - that is not correct. It is certainly healthy to have multiple sides with various ideas and visions for the country, which are in disagreement with each other and trying to convince people their solutions are the best. I experienced it in eCZ, when I came back to the game, and saw two different coalitions, both trying to achieve something good. That is the principle of democracy. However once you go down the path of chaos and conflicts, the toxicity becomes an easily achievable option (because, as we all know, it is far too easy to be angry and insulting on the internet than in RL - I myself can be a proof of that 😉 )

My team just scored another goal, they now lose 0:2 🙁 ... what did I want to say? Make "internal politics" messy might be a solution for inactivity - but you need to be extremely careful with it, or else it might cause even bigger damage to the community than doing nothing.


At the end, I would like to address the most recent article about the government. I will answer to parts, which might relate to me. With that said...

First of all - IF AT ANY TIME YOU THINK I AM FAILING AT MY JOB, OR I SHOULD BE DOING THINGS BETTER, OR YOU HAVE QUESTIONS ON ME, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO CONTACT ME DIRECTLY! It is so important, I needed to write this with Caps-Lock. Contacting me directly increases the chance I will receive your message and answer to you as soon as possible, and it is certainly easier way to achieve something than to write articles, where I cannot be 100% sure, if they are directed at me, or not (especially if I do not see my name there 🙂 ).

Secondly - I am still learning the ropes of eNL. I do not know yet all your procedures (but I know there is a plenty of them, and I know I cannot participate in most of them 😃 ), I do not know yet fully how your governments work in comparison with Cuban governments (which were quite specific in some areas) - and most importantly I am not a member of Congress, so my access to discussions and votings connected to anything MoFa/MoD related is difficult, and I need to rely on other members of government to do my job for me in this area.

Thirdly - do not be afraid. The government did not evaporate, we are working on our plans for the newest update, and they will be finished and presented to the public/Congress quite soon. Trust me - there were a lot of options, which needed to be discussed and sorted out, and we needed to be sure we are picking the best option out of all of them. I do not know, how it usually works here, but in Cuba, government always took some time to look at the options first to sort them out and solve all details, before it spilled them out. And that is what we did for the last 4-5 days. For the next time though... maybe it would be better, if government wrote on the feed "Hey guys, we are working on the issues connected with new update, do not worry, the plan will be presented to you soon!" If it will make you more calm, I personally will try to do just that next time I will be working on something, which I will be unable to reveal in full detail 🙂 .

My team lost the match... so I rather end the article, before my anger reaches from the brain to the keyboard 😃 !

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